Gross misunderstanding: The invisible world of 'Microbial Life'

Rather than yucky, the millions of microbes living in Fido’s mouth, Dad’s shorts and thriving throughout your kitchen are misunderstood wonders of diversity and beauty that sustain all life on Earth.

If you don’t believe it, visit “Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge of Sight,” a fun, enlightening exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History that will change how you think about the countless, virtually invisible organisms that touch every aspect of our lives.

“We are completely surrounded by microbes. A healthy adult teems with microbial life,” said exhibit co-organizer Robert Kolter, professor emeritus of microbiology at Harvard Medical School.

“Microbial Life” features varied living microbes, several interactive stations for visitors of all ages, informative displays and extreme close-up photographs that reveal the stunning beauty of organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Visitors see microbes growing in mud and cheese, a metallic slab from the Titanic covered with “rusticles” formed by undersea microbes and learn why your kitchen sink, faucet and sponges support more bacteria than your toilet seat.

It addresses a few old wives’ tales and microbial enigmas such as are dogs’ mouths cleaner than humans’, what makes garbage smell and should we eat a muffin that fell on the kitchen floor or throw it out.

Co-organized by Harvard Medical School research fellow and guest curator Scott Chimileski, the exhibit combines cutting edge science and art to reveal the worldwide impact of microbes while debunking misconceptions about gross mini-critters that cause disease and smelly garbage pails.

“Microbes live in communities and are much more complex than we thought they were. We wanted to find a way to show how they impact every aspect of our lives,” he said. “And we wanted visitors to see there’s a balance between good and bad microbes.”

Sylvie Laborde, senior designer at Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, said the exhibit was organized to be accessible to children and adults by presenting remarkably diverse lifeforms in everyday language while dispelling myths that “microbes are yucky.”

“We want to show people microbes are visually beautiful and necessary to life.”

The exhibit’s centerpiece, a life-sized kitchen dubbed “My Microbial Castle,” reminds visitors, said Kolter, that they live amid “incredible microbial activity” that keeps their yogurt fresh, their tea sweet and their garbage pail stinky.

The co-director of Harvard’s Microbial Sciences Initiative, he explained that single-celled microorganisms were the first forms of life to develop on Earth and originated “from the primordial soup” of a dramatically-changing planet around 3.5 billion years ago, likely in a warm setting.

Over the next billion years, Kolter said microbes proliferated in such extraordinary diversity they are the “progenitors of all life forms on Earth.”

Without the estimated trillion species of microbes, there would be no food to eat, no water to drink or air to breath.

“Microbes are so fundamental. We can learn so much about our environment that’s hidden from our eyes from them,” said Kolter. “We know a lot about them, but much remains unknown. There’s a fantastic reservoir of microbial life still to be explored.”

Chimileski and Kolter jointly wrote “Life at the Edge of Sight: A Photographic Exploration of the Microbial World,” which a reviewer praised for “beautifully illustrating the microscopic organisms that have shaped our world.”

Adult and young visitors said the exhibit taught them to see microbes in exciting new ways.

Viewing one of Chimileski’s luminous close-up photos of a microbe, Jeanine Casey, of Rochester, enthused, “It’s stunning. I’d never had imagined organisms I always thought of as gross could be so beautiful.”

Exploring with their dad, siblings Sylvie and William Barrick, of Concord, NH, received close-up and-personal introductions to microbes from two graduate students who spend several hours a day explaining the exhibit to visitors.

Lori Shapiro, a post-doctorate student in environmental biology at Harvard, showed the children a living, apple-sized “symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast,” which is the principal ingredient of Kombucha tea.

“I wanted to show them that microbes form communities and complex structures that provide flavor and other beneficial qualities,” said the Watertown resident.

And Brandon Sit, a graduate student at Harvard Medical School, scraped plaque from his teeth, placed it on a slide and showed the children a computerized image of the microbes that had been living in his mouth that resembled a slice of lemon meringue pie.